The Biography

Joël Curtz is a filmmaker, born in 1985. After completing a scientific baccalaureate in Paris, he joined the École Supérieure des Arts-Décoratifs in Strasbourg and was also assistant to the photographer Patrick Bailly Maitre Grand. He continued his studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under the tutelage of filmmaker Harun Farocki. He exhibits his photographic and video works in Berlin (Galerie Gilla Loercher) and Vienna (Galerie Ulrike Hrobsky). In pursuit of his post-graduate degree at Le Fresnoy, from 2011 to 2013, Joel completed his first documentary film project The Bride (La Mariée) about the fate of the Italian artist Pippa Bacca. The film is selected for competition at the 25th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) , presented on the RAI Television (Italy) and won several prizes : Prix des Amis du Fresnoy, the Special Mention of the First Creation jury of the Pointdoc Festival and the Audience Award of the Festival Regards au longs-courts 2014. Joel creates digital installations like To Your Image (A Votre Image) presented at the Fresnoy in the framework of Panorama 15 and at the Cent-Quatre Paris as part of the Festival Temps d'Images, nominated for the Young Talent Prize SCAM / Cent-Quatre / Arte and Voice of Shadows (La Voix des Ombres) presented at the Lavoir Public in Lyon, and then mainly focuses on film projects. In 2014, he was the Documentary Laureate of the Lagardère Foundation Grant, which gave birth to the documentary Burma, the power of the monks (Birmanie, le pouvoir des moines) , a film he co-directed for ARTE (previewed at FIGRA 2017 and nominated for the 2018 Farel Prize). Joël moved on to making fictional films in 2019 with the short film A Unique Opportunity (Une chance unique) selected in competition at the Clermont-Ferrand International Festival and the Rotterdam International Festival, and CNC Quality Award. In 2020, he directed Home is where the heart is (La chaleur du foyer), currently in post-production. Along with directing, Joël works as a screenwriter and consultant on fiction and documentary projects, and as a film and new media producer at the Centre Vidéo de Bruxelles (CVB).